I do not want to play the trumpet
Briefly:
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Hello,
I’ve been learning to play the trumpet.
This is not the fulfilment of a lifelong yearning. No, it’s something like the opposite of that. I do not want to play the trumpet. But Bert did, once, a long time ago. So I am playing the trumpet because I am nothing if not pragmatic.
You know how it goes: a year ago, I asked Bert if he’d like to learn an instrument. Yes, he said. The trumpet.
Are you sure about the trumpet? I said.
Yes, he said. I love the trumpet.
So we bought a trumpet and signed up for lessons, and every Monday night I would beg Bert to practise, and he would grudgingly make the most terrible noise in the kitchen. A bit of me - I mean, a huge part of me - wanted to offer him the opportunity to give up, and then we could all pretend it never happened. But the problem is, I gave up my instrument too. And I wanted to show him another way.
I was probably about the same age as Bert when I asked my mum if I could learn the clarinet. I have absolutely no idea what put that idea in my head - I think, perhaps, I saw it as a giant, fancy recorder, and therefore assumed it would be easy. We all learned the recorder at school, squawking together like a giant flock of tuneless birds. It seemed to me that I had a skillset that I could transfer to something more mellifluous.
My clarinet came as a birthday present, a musty-smelling instrument couched in crushed red velvet, and housed a brown leatherette case - bought, my mum told me, from the free ads. That’s probably where she found my teacher too, a man whose name (I promise this is real) was Mr Blow.
Once a week, we would drive to Gravesend so I could stand in Mr Blow’s spare bedroom and attempt to play compositions called Granite and Pastorale, all the while willing the whole thing to be over. Even at ten years old, I knew that there was something seedly about it, the music books piled on a spare bed, and the ageing man in a shirt and suit trousers, as if he’d just got home from the office. I gave up as soon as I possibly could, and I think everyone was relieved. A year later, Mr Blow became headline news in the Gravesend Reporter, when he disappeared with a fifteen year old pupil, claiming they were in love. My complete lack of enthusiasm was a lucky escape.
But I always felt bad about the clarinet. At secondary school, I took a few more lessons, but they were scheduled in the middle of my favourite class - English - and so I did everything I could to escape them. I knew, by then, that we couldn’t afford them anyway - and I’d noticed that nobody else’s clarinet came in a brown suitcase. Pressed into the school orchestra (third clarinet, entirely mimed), I would gaze over the other girls’ neat, black cases, and kick my own under the chair. There was something shameful about even trying.
Of course, I wish I had persisted now - but then, I also wish we’d had a piano in the hall like all the other families seemed to, and that I could now sit down and chime out a few carols every Christmas. I still don’t have the space, or the time, or the willpower. But what I can do - or so I thought, when I was furtively buying the cheapest trumpet I could find on Ebay - is show Bert what it takes to be a learner, to walk with him through the mire until, one day, it all comes clear.
So I offered to practice alongside him, a few nights a week, reasoning that I already knew my way around a musical stave, and that I’d probably sail ahead of him. No so. It turns out that playing the trumpet is really, really hard. Unlike the clarinet, the keys don’t correspond to the notes in any simple way. You have to make the right sounds with your mouth, and you sort of marshal them into tune with your fingers. It’s a fragile process, prone to squeaks and silences, and Bert is honestly pretty competent at it. I, on the other hand, am not. I suspect my bargain trumpet is flat, but then possibly so am I. On a good day, I can play a halting Au Clair de la Lune, but never once all the way through.
And if I’m completely honest, the part of the practice we both enjoy the most is when we break off to play random notes, pretending to be Miles Davis. With our fingers dancing recklessly over the keys, it’s the best either of us sound. Maybe we both have a future in fake jazz? Who knows. Only time will tell.
My News
Last week, I relaunched my Patreon - now called The Rookery - with some exciting new benefits aimed at building a community of readers and writers. There’s a new book club, online workshops for writers and creatives, monthly hangouts… it’s been a joy already! Check the new Rookery section below for information on the next few events, and sign up here if you’d like to join us. It really helps to make this newsletter and the podcast possible.
Speaking of the podcast, I’ve been busy recording the first few episodes, ready to re-launch in November - and we now have a lovely new ‘front cover’, which I can’t wait to show you. Soon, my friends. Soon!
In my spare time, I’ve been enjoying the sea getting cold again, celebrating the full moon, and hunting for mushrooms. It’s such a good season for being outdoors.
Live dates & workshops
Bookshop event: Little Green Book Shop, Herne Bay, 18th November 2022, 18.00 - 19.30. As we settle into the dark half of the year, I’ll be in conversation about Wintering. Book here.
At the Rookery…
We held our first workshop for The Wanderers tier on Saturday - the subject was Five Questions for the Start of Each day, and the replay is up now for any members who missed it.
Wednesday’s Creative Questions was a joy - we talked about how to get started, how to keep going, and when to start working on that book you’re carrying in your heart and mind (spoiler alert: now!), as well as building an audience and fact vs. truth in memoir. I love the chance to coach you all onwards a little bit!
The True Stories Book Club live with Sarah Krasnostein on Sunday 16th October, and a Monthly Hangout with special guest Elissa Altman on 21st October. Join our wonderful community here.
That’s all for this week - look out for a very special podcast episode with Susan Cain coming soon…
Take care,
Katherine
Website | Patreon | Courses | Preorder: Enchantment US | UK link coming soon! | Buy: Wintering UK / US | Buy: The Electricity of Every Living Thing UK / US
To say that this is brilliant is an understatement. To say that it is incredibly familiar (and spot on accurate) is another understatement. Mr. Blow? Say it ain't so.
I am a longtime guitarist, a fact that I used to keep hidden (I don't anymore). In third grade, I was asked to choose an instrument to play in band, and I chose the clarinet. My father went out and bought me an inexpensive one, and I still have it here, in my office, the reed still in the mouthpiece from my high school graduation in 1981. So adept was I at hopping from instrument to instrument that, as an aficionado of string band (British, American, etc) I took a shine to fiddle. I was so bad at it -- so witheringly horrible --- that our Airedale used to go out onto the terrace and bay for HELP every time I took it out and tucked it under my chin. I was forbidden from playing it, and my father wisely replaced it with a mandolin (same tuning, but strummed). My best friend, however, played trumpet from the time he was eight and is now a professional. There ARE harder things to play, Katherine, although very few of them. Maybe a 21 string sitar. What is Bert's preference?
I think I had that same clarinet before your parents found it, though I’ve no idea how it swam the Atlantic! Our ancient school music teacher thought it would be my perfect instrument, when all I really wanted was a guitar and piano. My father loved the organ, so that’s what we owned. Lessons at the nearby convent on Saturday mornings with the world’s oldest nun. I eventually got a really basic guitar for Christmas, probably from the Sears Roebuck Wishbook and learned a few halting tunes. I also learned that a cheap guitar, carelessly forgotten in the rain, is a goner. The piano didn’t materialize until decades later when my daughter was six and wanted to play. She is far more accomplished than I, but it still gives me pleasure to slowly plink through a song or two from time to time or put together random chords...keep riffing on the jazz, the memories will be worth every note, flat or not!